This is part of a weekly series called “Pop Opinions” where The Lantern offers its take on the week’s pop culture news.

Rowling keeps it real

A fan tweeted to the Harry Potter author Tuesday, saying ““Thank you so much for writing Harry Potter. I wonder why you said that Dumbledore is a gay because I can’t see him in that way.”

Awkward silence.

Then came an ultimate win of a response.

JK Rowling replied, “Maybe because gay people just look like…people?”

I understand people come from many different backgrounds and beliefs. But, in the words of Dumbledore himself: “It matters not what someone is born, but what they grow to be.”

The ‘Empire’ reigns

The season finale of Fox’s “Empire” premiered last week and I still haven’t seen it.

But I did spend all spring break watching the first 10 of 12 episode on Time Warner On Demand.

“Empire.” Is. Amazing.

I had heard about it (read: I had seen tweets about it) for a while. For some reason I thought it was about a railroad empire. My roommate thought it was about a drug empire (not entirely false). But instead it follows Lucious (“Luscious” without an “s”) Lyon and his recording empire, aptly named Empire Entertainment.

He has an ex-wife who spent 17 years in prison, a gay son he doesn’t understand, a non-musically talented son he doesn’t understand, and a completely self-loving jerk of a son that he fully understands.

I look forward to watching more of the rise and fall, whenever Time Warner gets around to letting me.

1D is one down

In a commentary we ran earlier this week, we addressed all the 1Drama. Well, it has reached a boiling point and now Zayn Malik is officially 1Done and going in a different direction.

The “band” announced the news on Facebook on Wednesday afternoon. Fans took to all forms of social media to express their distress.

I remember when Ryan Ross left Panic! at the Disco, the object of my preteen angst affection. I didn’t know how the band could go on without Ross’ intense guyliner, much like preteens now don’t know how One Direction will go on without Zayn’s bad boy image. There are videos of girls crying over the loss of Malik. They profess sentiments toward the man that make it sound like he is dying, not like he’ll continue populating tabloid and pop opinion headlines.

But meanwhile, others were dealing with real problems…

Womb Raider

Angelina Jolie wrote a column for The New York Times on Tuesday following up on her cancer preventative surgeries. The actress had a double mastectomy two years ago after learning she had an estimated 87 percent risk of breast cancer and 50 percent risk of ovarian cancer because of a genetic mutation. She had lost her grandmother, mother and aunt to cancer.

So she took it into her hands once more by getting her fallopian tubes and ovaries removed last week.

Jolie mentioned in her column that she is 39 and her mother was diagnosed with ovarian cancer at 49. The doctor who performed her surgery was with her mother on the day she died.

What Jolie did was powerful, emotional, strong and raw.

It wasn’t “save the boobies/tatas/second base” and it’s more than sex and sex appeal.

It’s taking care of yourself.